FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
Passionate, edgy, unapologetic… “RaceBrave: new and selected works” provides another glimpse into Karsonya Wise Whitehead’s work to document her experience raising two black boys in a post-racial America. On July 7, 2014, the day Eric Garner was murdered, Whitehead set out to write about what was happening across America to unarmed black people, in doing so she explores the feelings of hopelessness and helplessness that resonate with parents around the country-sometimes with humor, sometimes with sadness, but always with an ear that bends toward the truth.

Cover of “RaceBrave: new and selected works”

Whiteheads’s Amazon Author’s Page

In marking these moments, Whitehead also reached back into her childhood diaries to examine how life has changed for her, as a writer, a poet, and a mother over the years. “RaceBrave” is a masterwork that covers multiple topics and captures every mood: today, my heart stopped is both dolorous and heartbreaking as it examines what happens when black men demand the right to be seen and to be able to breathe, while the birth of your activism examines the days leading up the Baltimore Uprising as Whitehead’s sons chose to march for ten days straight for justice, for Freddie Grey, and ultimately in search of the world that they are hoping to co-create. Going back into her archives, comfedderate flag memories highlights Whitehead’s feelings about the confederate flag in both 1980 and in 2015 while speaking my truth, finally reveals a story that she has been trying to write about for twenty-five years. In the section, “Black Love is Black Wealth,” Whitehead celebrates the many aspects of love with we are gathered, a poem in memory of her favorite uncle; a regenerative descant, in celebration of the retirement of a Marine after thirty-years of service; and, soulmates and soulfood (kuro ai), five short playful tender poems about being brave enough to fall and remain in love. At once personal and political, poignant and apoplectic, these forty-five poems evoke a society where all voices are heard, all perspectives are respected, and everyone has the courage to be “RaceBrave.”

Growing up, as an aspiring writer, I used to read and be inspired by the work of Khalil Gibran. I would challenge myself to find a way to make my work leap off of the page just like his work did. I memorized his words and held them close to my heart. When I realized that I was going to be a mother, that someone had chosen me, I decided that I was going to be a #blackmommyactivist and practice the art of revolutionary mothering. I wrote out the words to his poem, “On Children,” and hung them on my wall as a daily reminder of what it meant to try and practice revolutionary mothering:

Your children are not your children. They are the sons and the daughters of Life’s longing for itself. They come through you but not from you, And though they are with you yet they belong not to you.[1]

The Writer (Karsonya Wise Whitehead) with her two young budding writers!

And though I had no idea of what this looked like in practice, I just knew that in order to raise happy, healthy, and whole children, I needed to consciously speak love into their lives, to speak hope into their spirits, and to birth and nurture a sense of self and of belonging into their soul. Revolutionary mothering is hard. It is not for the faint of heart. Although there are some guideposts, set up by sister writers and scholars along the way, the path is one that each revolutionary mother must carve and scratch out daily. Dr. Gumbs takes on this challenge and studies and writes about what this has looked like in the lives of revolutionary mothers like June Jordan and Alice Walker, Audre Lorde and asha bandele. She artfully tackles this subject and then opens up the way for others to follow. I believe that revolutionary mothering is a daily practice of letting our children go. Gibran writes that as a parent, “You may strive to be like them, but seek not to make them like you.” So what does this mean when it is applied to the daily practice of mothering in a revolutionary way? This month, I explore this topic and more in my interview with Dr. Alexis Pauline Gumps about her forthcoming anthology, Revolutionary Mothering: Love on the Front Lines.

[1] http://agutie.homestead.com/files/children_1.htm

This month, I explore revolutionary mothering and more in my interview with Dr.  Gumbs about her forthcoming anthology, Revolutionary Mothering: Love on the Front Lines.

KW: Why did you decide to write this book?

AG: The short answer is that we [Gumbs and co-editors Mai’a Williams and China Martens] believe that mothering is revolutionary. The people who aren’t supposed to have a chance to mother—like black/queer/poor people, people like us and the people who mothered us, are recreating the world every day in intimate, intergenerational, creative and collective ways—should be given a space to tell their stories. If we are ever going to have the society that we need (like one where humans get to keep living on this planet, for example) everyone needs to learn from the world-changing daily work that we call mothering.

KW: Which writers inspire you?

AG: There are so many people who have written amazing work about mothering. YOU [Karsonya Whitehead] for example, both on your Facebook page and in your book, Letters to My Black Sons: Raising Boys in a Post-Racial America. asha bandele is also a major inspiration (especially her novel, daughter, and her memoir, something like beautiful, all of her poems, her Facebook posts, her Essence magazine articles, her mama blog posts… basically everything by asha, ever). When I was teenager, asha told me that she woke up before dawn so that she could write before her daughter needed her. And so I started writing early in the morning and it changed everything.

Alice Walker’s writing about what she called “motherism,” building on her idea of “womanism,” and her classic book In Search of Our Mother’s Gardens (this was crucial reading for me). Audre Lorde’s essay, “Eye to Eye,” where she writes that, “We can learn to mother ourselves.” This idea of mothering ourselves along with the generous ways she writes about her practice of mothering in her essays and poems is a major inspiration. Of course, I include all of the writers in this anthology. Cheryl Boyce Taylor has a poem in this collection and she is a writer who writes a poem every single day. She is such an inspiration and I am SO glad that her poetry is in this book. And last (but not really last because there are SO many writers that inspire me) and also not least, JUNE JORDAN! Her unpublished essay where she explains her philosophy that “love is life-force” is the opening jewel of this book. Her vision and practice of how all writers can and must be accountable to children is…my religion.

Cover of “Revolutionary Mothering: Love on the Front Lines” –edited by Alexis Pauline Gumbs, China Martens, and Mai’a Williams

KW: You refer to yourself as a scholar/writer – can you explain what this means to you?

AG: I see my role as an ancestral connection.  I love to research about the lives of black women who loved their people and changed the world.  And in my work as a researcher I seek to connect us to that love.  My own writing consists of structured opportunities for connecting to generations of love, bravery, and change.

KW: What writing advice do you have for other aspiring authors?

AG: Do what asha and Cheryl do. Write first. Write every day.

KW: What advice would you give to your younger self?

AG: You have nothing to prove. Ever.

KW: Tell us about the book’s cover and how it came about.

AG: The revolutionary artist Favianna Rodriguez made this beautiful image for the Mama’s Day series of cards, which is an amazing benefit for a coalition called Strong Families. This coalition is a major inspiration for us. Strong Families has brought people together to fight to change the oppressive laws that harm mother-led families, families of color, immigrant families, exactly the families at the center of Revolutionary Mothering. We just loved the artwork so much. I sent that mama’s day card to everyone I could think of when it first came out. We are so honored that Favianna allowed us to use it for the cover of the book!

About the Writer: Alexis Pauline Gumbs is a prayer poet priestess with a PhD in English, African and African American Studies and Women and Gender Studies from Duke University. Dr. Gumbs is the first scholar to research Audre Lorde’s archival papers at Spelman College and is the founder of the School of Our Lorde, a night school in Durham, NC focused on the work of Audre Lorde.  She is published widely in scholarly journals and collections including Signs, Obsidian, The Encyclopedia of LGBTQ Literature and The Routledge Companion to Anglophone Caribbean Literature and has published chapters on Audre Lorde’s work in the collections Mothering in Hip Hop Culture and Laboring On: Mothers in the Academy.  She is one of the editors of the forthcoming book, Revolutionary Mothering: Love on the Front Lines. Find her on Facebook or Twitter (@alexispauline) and read more on her blog.

About the Interviewer: Karsonya “Kaye” Wise Whitehead, Ph.D. is Assistant Professor, Department of Communication at Loyola University Maryland and the Founding Executive Director at The Emilie Frances Davis Center for Education, Research, and Culture. Her most recent work, Letters to My Black Sons: Raising Boys in a Post-Racial America, was published by Apprentice House in January 2015.

(for Jordan Davis, forever 17)

We are not invisible
simply because you refuse to see us.
We will not stop fighting
simply because you demand our obedience.
We will not stop dancing
simply because you refuse to hear our song.
We will not give up
simply because you want us to believe
that power/concedes without a struggle.
We are not going to forfeit our voices
simply because you are tired of hearing our words.
We will not stop shouting
simply because you try to cut out our tongues.
We will not stop coming
simply because you hold up your palm.
We will not continue to be your monsters,
the things that go bump in your night,
the reason you toss and turn in your sleep
simply because you refuse to recognize our humanity.